Development Blog

Development Blog

Scribble Code has existed as a single-developer company from the beginning, but with Version 2 on the way and many plans beyond that, the time has come to expand the development team.

You will be working directly with me on all aspects of application development, with goals including finalizing Aeon Timeline Version 2, supporting the new release, engaging with user requests for future functionality, generating ideas for new features, and launching Aeon Timeline onto new platforms such as mobile, tablet, and cloud-based solutions.

I am late to the party, but I recently stumbled across this excellent book, “Writing: A User Manual” by David Hewson. This is the most practically useful writing advice book I have come across. I was pleased to see many pages and screenshots dedicated to Scrivener, and I expect to return to it often to re-read little snippets of half-remembered advice.

But it was Hewson’s comments on time that caught my intention for this blog. In introducing the subject, Hewson says:

“When it comes to fiction, and series fiction in particular, time stinks. It’s a blight on us all, a nasty chunk of so-called reality that tries to poke its ugly head in where it’s not wanted.”

He goes on to write:

“Yet writers still agonize over time. They nag people who make writing software to include some kind of timeline feature so they can map out the chronology of their story to the last second. They – you may wish to look away here – plan their tales in sad columns in Excel spreadsheets as if they were lines on a P&L statement (and may the Lord have mercy on their souls).”

While I agree with his comments about Excel, as the person who wrote a timeline tool in response to that nagging, I will defend my wonderful nagging users at every opportunity. The many valid arguments Hewson makes when advocating specialist writing software like Scrivener over Word exist ten-fold when the alternative is forcing a business spreadsheet program into a pseudo-timeline tool.

It has been some time since I posted a blog announcement, so this post completes a housekeeping task that has been building up for a while, documenting a few links and updates that have taken place over the last six months.

In addition, if you have noticed a slowdown in technical support over the last month, it is because I have been moving house with all the accompanied packing, cleaning, buying and selling that entails. The good news is the move is now behind me, support is slowly catching up, and most importantly, following this move, I will be reducing my full-time working hours elsewhere so that I can spend more time developing Aeon Timeline.

Right then, onto the housekeeping…

Windows Version Released

As will be obvious to anyone visiting the website, the Windows version was released in October last year in time for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 2013.

Thank you to everyone who provided suggestions and advice about technology choices etc. in the early stages of the process. As will become apparent, I opted for a Desktop version of the application first, as this could match the Mac version more closely.

I will follow up on some earlier developer-oriented posts about porting the application from Mac to Windows some time soon. If I get time, I hope to release some of the source code I wrote to achieve certain tasks (such as Document and Undo Management) that come pre-built in the Mac Cocoa libraries, in the vain hope it will assist others making the same transition in future.

Aeon Timeline Press

In March, Aeon Timeline was featured in a blog post written by Elizabeth Haynes for the NaNoWriMo website. You can read the blog post here:

Back in October of last year, I joined Ben and Mary Ellen from the Reader/Writer podcast to discuss Aeon Timeline, and joined in their regular segments discussing books and television. You can listen to that particular episode at the link below, or subscribe to the Reader/Writer podcast via iTunes and the usual channels.

As part of Aeon Timeline’s sponsorship of NaNoWriMo last year, I conducted a series of author chats with writers using Aeon Timeline to assist their NaNoWriMo writing or preparation. Originally, these were only linked to from our dedicated NaNoWriMo page, but I am making them available for everyone to read via the links below.

In keeping with the NaNoWriMo spirit, our interviews were open to published writers, enthusiastic amateurs, and even some first time users of Aeon Timeline.

10 November: Ashland Pym: NaNoWriMo participant since 2009. Ashland studies and writes about Mythology, if she can find the time in November for both.

Next Major Update

With the Mac and Windows version completed, and with a large number of excellent user suggestions piling up on my to-do list, I have started work on the next major version of Aeon Timeline. Aside from incorporating a lot of users suggestions, this next update will aim to give the user more control, and make it more flexible and customisable for a wide variety of contexts.

In case anyone is interested in assisting, some time in the next month or so I will be looking for User Interface/User Experience designers to help with the redesign.

It is a little too early to talk about specific features, and definitely to early to talk about release dates, but it is an exciting time to be working on the project.

The Mac and Windows versions will be developed simultaneously so that they can be released together.